Ever since the noise community discovered synth pop and minimal wave was born, there has been an excessive influx of pseudo punks armed with TR-606s and unreliable monophonic synthesizers noodling around trying to be the Human League. The problem is that far too many emphasize the minimal part and crank out Soundcloud accounts full of boring repetition and no real sense of direction. Max Brotman and Jesse Short are one of the exceptions to this pattern, however. The fact that they are not only willing to experiment with that template, but also know how to write an actual song, put them head and shoulders amongst the multitude of their peers.

Much like my approach to Merzbow's prolific schedule, I take a similar tact when indulging in the work of Aidan Baker and Nadja. There is simply too much material coming out under those guises to stay engaged in without quickly becoming burnt out. So again, I am happy to infrequently dabble and keep my interest piqued, which is the case with both this solo release and collaboration with noted minimalist project Troum. In this case, Baker on his own may waiver, but bolstered by collaborators he does extremely well.

The murky depths of low-range tones are like subconscious murmurs. This kind of music speaks in so much depth, more than the imaginary space that an echo brings, or "atmospheres" built with samples and noise. Justin Walter's music is bassy, perplexing and intimate. Lullabies And Nightmares is an album which plays heavily with literal and imagined distances, where contact is always out of reach, always obscured by invariably plump electronic tones and the warmth of his ideas are paired with mechanical rigidity. It helps, too, that he has created a suite of beautiful melodies to mess with.

Glenn Jones' music is an omnipresent force. No pretensions or barriers to entry exist in well-executed American primitivism; the baggage is made along with the impression made on the listener. This album is inspired by a host of personal conflicts for Jones, primarily that the recording sessions occurred while he was taking care of his ailing mother in a nursing home in New Jersey. But he never compromises his artistic intent in the midst of trying times, only injecting them with a savvy humanism. The songs he's created are, even in their exact subject matter, timeless and miraculous things.

This 1982 album was Zoviet France's second release and has come to be known by a few different names over the years, most prominently "Hessian" (an English synonym for burlap).  The reason for that is simple: the original LP was packaged in screen-printed burlap, making it ZF's first foray into the bizarre packaging that they came to be known for in the '80s.  Of course, the music within is also quite bizarre, even by the band's own extremely outré standards.  There are certainly some clear hints of the faux-tribalism and tape loop experiments that would eventually solidify as Zoviet France's aesthetic (for a while anyway), but this enthusiastically primitive affair also features some very unexpected twists, such as absurdist humor, recognizable guitars, howled vocals, and (unbelievably) slap bass.

When it was first released in 2008, this massive (and newly reissued) ambient epic met with a rather polarized reception, but has gradually come to be fairly unanimously hailed as a classic.  I am a bit conflicted about that: while it certainly is a fine album, I have seen it favorably compared to Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II, which seems very wrong to me, despite their similarly bleary, haunted feel.  The difference between the two albums is a massive, fundamental one: with Imperial Distortion, Drumm willfully abandons noise, melody, rhythm, and composition to fully embrace the hypnotic power of gently oscillating stasis.  It is an experiment that works beautifully and yields very listenable results, but it is far from the apotheosis of Kevin's work.

Matthew Bower is best known with his work in the noise rock (more emphasis on the noise) band Skullflower, but closely followed with his formless output as Total. The reason I am mentioning both of these is that this new guise, with partner Samantha Davies, is some sort of mutant hybrid of these two: filth ridden lo-fi feedback with the occasional hint of melody or rhythm that somehow sneaks through. Between these two discs, the duo stick with this blueprint, occasionally drifting fully into one direction or the other, but always resulting in material that screams to be blasted as loud as possible.

As one of the handful of truly innovative artists to spring off from the drone metal template, the trio of Locrian had previously been rather prolific, tweaking and honing their sound to something singular and unique amidst a flurry of singles and split releases. However, other than a few high profile collaborations of late (Mamiffer, Christoph Heemann), they have been rather quiet since 2011's The Clearing. Return to Annihilation, the first new material after signing to Relapse, proves that this time and effort was well spent, perfecting their sound in ways that are both more accessible, but also pushing the more abstract moments they have been working with since the beginning even further.

Recently, I have been delving deeper and deeper into Esplendor Geométrico's discography and it has become increasingly clear to me that their prime never actually ended.  Arturo Lanz and his varying bandmates have certainly released some comparatively uneven or tame efforts over the course of their three-decade career, but Lanz has never stopped being a rhythmic genius and can still unleash a crushing masterpiece at any time.  One such gem, "Aplicación Insospechada," comes at the end of this intermittently impressive (and woefully underappreciated) 2009 effort.

Between the final Throbbing Gristle albums and last year's stellar Carter Tutti Void collaboration, Chris and Cosey have been maintaining an atypically high profile as of late, which makes it easy to forget that there has not been a new Carter Tutti album in over five years.  While that situation is not expected to be remedied until sometime in 2014, this very solid 10" single makes for a very welcome teaser in the meantime.

Cécile Schott released a truly impressive string of beautiful, distinctive albums in the early and mid '00s, but went mysteriously silent after 2007's Les Ondes Silencieuses (much to my chagrin).  Now she is thankfully back and seems creatively re-invigorated, yet noticeably transformed: her latest effort is every bit as good as her previous work, but takes her aesthetic in a much more pristine, stripped-down, and song-like direction than I expected.

Anonymous emerged from a group of friends who played at each other’s houses in and around Indianapolis in the early ‘70s. They recorded their debut and sole album in a garage in Milwaukee in 1976, the same year that the Ramones and Blondie released their debuts. They pressed approximately 300 copies, but never played a gig, never promoted the album, and released only one follow-up, albeit under a different name and with a different lineup. That one record is remarkable though, a private press gem with excellent musicianship, beautiful vocal harmonies, and imaginative songwriting from their front man, Ron Matelic.

I have historically had a very complicated relationship with William Basinski's work, as he has released some absolutely brilliant albums over the years, but he has also proven himself just as capable of producing fairly forgettable ambient music and/or flogging a single simple motif to death for a seeming eternity.  This latest effort lies somewhere in the middle of those two poles, as the blurred, uneasy title piece favorably calls to mind a more hallucinatory Morton Feldman, while the closing "The Trail of Tears" gradually devolves into an especially cold, dull, and dreary strain of dark ambiance that is best avoided.

This was my first exposure to the work of video artist/composer JR Robinson and it more or less left me absolutely flattened.  You've Always Meant So Much To Me is ostensibly just a single drone piece Robinson wrote to soundtrack one of his films, but a far better description is probably "a veritable Murderers' Row of Chicago's finest black metal and noise musicians converged at Steve Albini's studio to perform a truly crushing, slow-burning, and blackened epic."  More remarkable still: the album is even better than that sounds.

This double disc set is an expanded reissue of the first two 17 Pygmies albums and their debut EP Hatikva. It is a fine document of the group formed by Savage Republic member Philip Drucker (aka Jackson Del Rey) in an attempt to make music that was more melodic than SR.

Pan•American's first record in four years comes timidly, marked by magnificently produced songs on eggshells and generally downplaying every one of its own notes. Now a performing band with the addition of Steven Hess and former Labradford bandmate Bobby Donne, the project of Mark Nelson adds a few elements of traditional rock music to his palate but only in the scarcest concentrations possible. What was once scattered becomes rhythmic, melodic, and occasionally more sporadic but still as sparse.

Consisting of the pair of artists that curate the Menstrual Recordings label, who have been heavy on the MB reissues, it is not at all surprising that Dedali and Disruptor’s grey, depressive electronics owe a notable debt to Bianchi’s legacy. However, their music stands entirely on its own, both in its emphasis on audio visual presentation and their approach to sound design. The lineage of this lavish CD/DVD set is clear, but the two manage to carve out their own niche as well.

The first collaboration between Kazuyuki Kishino and Cristiano Lucani is a mass of mangled samples, processed field recordings, electronics, and piano that at times resembles an understated take on harsh noise, and at other times a sloppy, yet engaging mess of sounds. While an intense devotion to structure and composition might not be here, there are more than enough pleasurable noises and small, but fascinating outbursts to more than make up for that

Originally issued on the Flingco Sound System label in 2010, this Virginian trio's full-length album is on CD for the first time, complete with two previously unreleased bonus songs. Homegoing is a powerful, yet light suite of electronic pieces that proves that intensity does not have to be oppressive or forceful.

Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin have been responsible for some of my favorite music for years, but Big Blood is a significantly weirder, more unpredictable, and prickly entity than the duo's previous outlet, Fire on Fire.  While they are almost always compelling and distinctive, Big Blood's voluminous output, occasional shrillness, general inscrutability, and stylistic variability can make them a hard band to fully embrace.  Fortunately, this gorgeous double LP captures captures Colleen and Caleb at their absolute best, occupying the bizarre, lonely nexus where Appalachian folk, ritual, sound art, vintage Egyptian pop, and deep psychedelia intersect.